Five Hours to Cape St Vincent

Sailing due south at a respectable 7 kts under headsail alone, we are about 5 hours from rounding Cape St Vincent and so into the Algarve. Unless things change in the next few hours we have picked a good time to round the notorious headland, as the seas are calm and the winds abating.

We left Cascais at 1000 hours this morning, just the 3 of us. Sailing has been a bit on and off, with rather variable winds. We decided to head 10 miles out to sea to find some wind and our decision proved a good one, so we sat in the sunny cockpit with a sandwich lunch of home made bread and the usual assortment of deli items under full sail for a couple of hours.

The afternoon seemed to disappear into night quickly, despite being entertained by a tiny migratory bird, no bigger than a tit that hopped and flew around the deck and even below decks, catching and feasting on flies! A better fly killer we could not have asked for! He left when the food ran out. We watched him head south.